Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England (1811-26)
As travel to the Continent was halted during the Napoleonic Wars, British artists focused instead on their native landscape, with the result that views of Britain took the place of scenes of the European Grand Tour. Many of the works in this section are studies for the Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England, a series of eighty prints published between 1814 and 1826. Turner, who was one of several notable artists included in the project, was contracted to provide twenty-four watercolours. In the later stages of the project, he was commissioned to create an additional sixteen designs.

In this group of works, nearly every stage of Turner's working process is present, from sketchbook pages truthfully recording a scene, to imaginative explorations of atmospheric effects, to more finished drawings as well as the resulting prints. In these examples one can also get a feel for Turner's choice of media. The outlines in sketchbooks are mostly made in graphite (pencil), which he occasionally supplemented with pen and ink. Notice in the colour studies that barely any pencil is evident; in the early stages of working out a design Turner was much more interested in laying out blocks of colour than detail. Such finesse came later, as can be seen in the prints derived from his finished watercolours. The high quality of these works was widely recognised but was only achieved through a painstaking collaborative process between Turner and a team of printmakers who executed the detailed instructions specified by the artist on each proof.